But of course the majority of private schools are to some extent selective, some extremely so, while the majority of state secondary schools aren?t, so you would not necessarily expect to find 93% of Cambridge students coming from the state sector (even ignoring the fact that the % using private education is higher than 7% by 16 as fewer families use it for primary). We also know that students with top grades at state schools are less likely to apply to Cambridge. So it is not necessarily that private schools are offering an academic advantage, but that they have a more academic cohort of children to start with, and their families/teachers are more likely to encourage them to apply to Cambridge or they are more likely to choose to.
